UFO progress in an all-night-quilting session

I finished the appliqué on border 3 of my Simple Yet Elegant BOM on what was left of my Friday and Saturday morning but then had to prepare for an all night quilting sessions with a couple of the girls.  Apart from Wilna, who has done this with me before, the other 2 were newbies at quilting through the night.  The girls arrived with a salad bowl I at first thought would feed an army especially after they started adding to the basic ingredients.  It seems however they knew they'd need every ounce of energy to make it through the night and very little left-overs made it to the dustbin.

Natasha and Wilna

Sonja brought along a UFO but broke the rules by also bringing Jelly Roll strips and enough fabric for a third possible project.  The idea of these all night quilting sessions is to bring something that you NEED to work on but not necessarily WANT to and hopefully with being faced with only one project you'll get to take it up again and possibly finish it.  So with too many options, Sonja soon decided that she could do with a little sleep for an hour or two and disappeared onto the couch.

Natasha came with a quilt top for a baby and up until this evening she too was one of those people who badmouthed herself into believing that she couldn't free motion quilt.  We set her up nicely; Sonja cleaned out her machine, oiled it and replaced the needle.  Then we created a perfect space with a machine bed, supreme slider and once she put on the winning gloves there was just no stopping her!

Here she looks at her completed top with only the borders in need of some quilting still.  No mother could be prouder of her baby than Natasha was of this quilt!  Here's a little close-up of her very first free motion stitching.

I couldn't decide whether she was prouder of the front or the back of her quilt, so I had to take a photo of the back as well.

When I saw Sonja's Jelly Roll it reminded me of a block pattern I found on the internet on Friday and I showed her this.  Having to start reading and understanding instructions at 2:15 am seemed a little daunting and Sonja decided this block was just way too difficult to explain to anyone else.  In the end it turned out the block was basically just a variation of the Cathedral Window.

Sonja 

I think if Sonja reads the instructions again on a morning that she's all fresh, she'll wonder where the difficult part was.

Wilna, her quiet ladylike self, worked on the free motion of her Colorful Cube quilt and got ¾ of it done.  Just a couple of block more to go.

Wilna

Natasha, by then almost asleep in her chair, quilting with only one eye open at a time.... "to give the other one a bit of a break!", decided to push through and quilt the border and a new pattern almost came naturally after she overcame her initial fear of doing the free motion quilting.  You go girl!!

I took out a very old UFO I've had for a couple of years.  There are several reasons why this stays a UFO. It is compiled of all my least favorite things..... a "one block" pattern, the same colors in every single block and finally it is foundation pieced, my least favorite quilting technique.  However every block I get to stitch during the 'all night quilting' is a block that wouldn't have been done otherwise, so I too pushed through and completed 5 of these twisted log cabin blocks.

The next morning I finished one more to at least complete row 3 and went to bed with DH cooking us a whole chicken in the Weber with a tray filled with mixed veggies basting in the dripping sauce of the chicken.  When I woke up just before lunch I only had to make a salad and we could enjoy lunch before I again went to bed to enjoy my Sunday afternoon nap!